TAU - Chapter 3: Viable

Summary: Third chapter of a work of slipstream fiction, an anachronistic journey through the lives of four women. It begins with the protagonist's death and her descent a into a world below a Montana cemetery.

Chapter 1

“You
scared us.”

“I—I? I
scared…” Anne stammered. As if these people were the ones who should
be scared. As if, in this situation, an
aching and confused Anne should somehow be scary. She felt dizzy again. The warm, working hand touched her shoulder
briefly, and then withdrew.

“You should not have been awake.”

“Awake?”

“You should not… have been alive. We have given you half a dose and it has
woken you back up. But I do not know how
you were awake in the first place. I
mean…” her voice trailed off. “Did Bob
say anything to you?”

No response.

Then speaking more quickly “He really fucked up your box,
you should have come feet first. I hope
your back is okay.”

The words of this strange woman, lilted by her accent;
something Middle-Eastern, or no, throatier,
sharper, she wasn’t sure, went into Anne’s
ear but lingered there waiting to be understood, a task that seemed futile, a
wait that seemed endless. She couldn’t
think so she decided to look.

She turned her head, which felt more normal now, left and
slowly right. She did not know how many people
were there earlier, fuzzy shadows in that fuzzy light, but she could tell that
many were gone. There was only this
woman. And a few meandering in the
background, in corners against dirt walls.
There were no sources of natural light, no way to tell how much time had
passed. But time had passed, she could
tell, she could feel it in her bones, less lead-like but still heavy.

A very young girl with two looped blond braids in red
ribbons wearing some kind of Slavic traditional dress walked over to the woman,
who had placed her hand back on Anne’s shoulder. She gave the woman a vial of reddish-brown
liquid, rich like Alabama dirt, that seemed to swirl around in the vial on its
own. And as the woman took it Anne
thought she heard that vial humming a low hum, but this must have been her ears
deceiving her. They still felt unused to
hearing.

The woman stared at the vial in her hand for a few
seconds, then turned back to Anne.
“I’m—”

“—Noura.” Anne finished.
She did not have a clue what was going on but she had heard that sound,
that melody. And she wanted to show that
she was competent. She was going to
survive. She wasn’t going to let whoever
these crazy people were fuck with her.
She could hear. She could
talk. She could reason if these people
could give her some useful information to reason with.

“Yes, that’s my name.
But I’m the Gardener- I’m in charge here. Do you know where you are?”

Not a warehouse.
Anne’s thoughts began to race, indiscernible and limitless questions
darting around in that place between her ears, beneath her curls.

“You’re under.”

Under? Under
what?

“This is Under Ground.”

Darting, back and forth.
Questions, epiphanies. Under…
Ground: two words. The name of a
place.

Noura smiled.
“What’s your name?”

Hesitation.
Quietly, “Anne.”

“Anne.” Noura said the name with a strong emphasis on the
‘n’, almost making it two syllables.
“Anne, you died.”

Matter-of-factly.
Formal.

“I don’t know how.
I don’t know where. That’s not
our business. Our business is to find
out if you are viable. If you are able
to become a productive member of this society.”

Formality almost over.

“You have two options.
You can do so, or you can enter death- peacefully. You were already in the sleep of death and if
you wish you can go to that place forever.
As you will have already found there is nothing there. But there is peace. What is not an option is going back up. You will never return there and you cannot
see anyone still living. You have two options.”

Like a spelling bee, word, letters, word.

Anne looked at Noura with a blank stare.

“Do you want me to repeat them?”

“What?”

“Your options.”
Noura seemed to be waiting a minute or two for things to sink in.

“I’m… dead?”

“You died darling, I didn’t say you that necessarily
means you’re dead.” The Gardener looked away for a moment, as if
she knew should not be using words like darling, making a mental note to
herself. “Look we haven’t had someone
new in a…” Noura looked back at a man standing against the wall. She continued, “many long times.”

“Noura, are you talking shit about me?” asked the man in
whose direction Noura’s head had, she thought, nonchalantly turned.

Noura sighed. “No,
Larry, I was just trying to remember when you first graced us with your
presence.” She turned back to Anne. “Now, my colleague here…”

Noura’s voice trailed off as Anne could feel her eyes going
out of focus.

Noura hesitantly put a hand on her shoulder, as if she
was resisting the urge to snap her long fingers in front of Anne’s face. “My colleague here,” gesturing with a slight
nod to the girl with the looped braids, who Anne looked at with heightened
attention, having already forgotten the child.
“She will assess you,” Noura continued.
“We will spend a very short while assessing your viability, and during
that time please let us know which option you prefer.”

“What are the options?”

Join us or die, again.
“Your life has ended. You can
take this opportunity, to exist, or you can cease to.”

Anne couldn’t listen anymore, she was done being meek on
the outside, rational on the inside, or at least pretending to be, doing her
best to lie to herself. She sprang up,
adrenaline replacing the pain that was already dulling, the weight that was
already lifting. “Fuck this, I’m out of
here,” fumbling off of the mattress.

Noura did not look surprised. She was not a veteran of the job but she knew
the drill.

Anne was spitting words in shock, not really hearing her
own rant and by the looks of Noura she wasn’t either. But she continued, “…don’t know who you think
you are or where the fuck you have taken me or what the fuck you think you are
doing with me but I’m not going to be experimented on or have my organs stolen
or join your cult with your dirty k--kool-aid vials. I mean, um, look, just,” she began to stumble
but then found some more steam to continue, “Your colleague? How old is that kid? Where are her parents? Who the hell do you think you are putting
people in coffins and trying to convince them they are dead.”

Calmly. “I already
told you. You died. You are not dead. Your life
is dead. Your life is over.” She
glanced at her skeptical-looking cohort.
“Based on your behavior you should be dead, really dead, already,”
giving the vile a little shake. The
leisurely pace needed to end. “Maja?” The
Gardener asked without looking. “Give me
your assessment.”

The young girl grabbed both of Anne’s hands and sharply
pulled her back down onto the mattress.
She was incredibly strong, acted swift and hard like a cop with a big
ego. Anne was frightened again, her
bravado wearing thin, her walls falling down.
Maja took Anne’s face in her hands.
Her heart was still racing and her breath still quick but she didn’t
want whatever was in that vile, that was for sure. Maja tugged at Anne’s hair, pulled her
eyelids up and down, then squatted to pat her torso down like the TSA. She pulled up Anne’s left sleeve and for the
first time Anne realized what she was wearing, her long-sleeved navy dress, her
only dress, and red Converse. Her mother
would not have chosen them, and for the most miniscule moment in time, she
could feel her little sister with her.
Who would protect Kate now? Anne
looked back at the small yet firm hand on her wrist. A red checkmark had been drawn in marker on
the inside of her left forearm. Maja
turned to Noura and gave an approving nod.
She stood and took a step back.

“So?” Noura asked.
Maja gave one last withholding look at Anne, more confused than before,
out of anger, blank. She looked at Noura
and gave a wiggling gesture with her hand, a silent “so-so”.

“Well then,” Noura chimed back in, “the decision rests
with me. And I’m going to put my neck on
the stone and let you in.” Noura looked
up, perhaps wondering whether or not that phrase was colloquial English. “But I need you to remember that your life,
your old life, is over. Now you are
here, Under.”

Anne said nothing.
She just tried, in that moment, to stay still. Wondering for some reasons unknown if that
might somehow help.

The Gardener continued.
“And here there are certain rules.
The most important is that you are here to work. You must do as you are told. And you must not disrupt the order of
things. Otherwise your death will be
made everlasting.”

Anne wasn’t listening.
Her life was over. Regardless of what Noura said, Anne’s life
was over before she got in that oak box.

As Anne followed Noura out of the dirt room with the
mattress where she had fallen through the ceiling, she tried to match the pace
of the woman ahead of her, who she noticed was tall, maybe five foot eight or
nine, with narrow hips and shoulders, textured kinky black hair with bits of gray
pulled back thick and full at the nape of her neck, and that warm but fading
dark olive skin that looked as though it would glisten like molasses in the sun
and grey under the moonlight like in a black and white film. She wore green tank top, cargo pants, and
leather sandals. She had a few worn
woven bracelets tied around her left arm and her walk was a bit awkward but her
head was back, held high. Noura’s good
posture meant she was probably closer to Anne’s height, around five foot six or
seven.

The tunnel curved here and there, and because the hanging
lights varied in their brightness it looked to Anne like a living and breathing
chamber of unique and otherworldly paths, one rapidly becoming another and
another. It was as if they were walking
down the esophagus of a giant beast, headed for its belly. As Noura navigated the beast’s entrails Anne
told herself this could still all be a dream.
A bad trip. Anne hadn’t done any
hallucinogens in a while. But Jorge at
work mentioned he did mescaline on a reservation once and spent what felt like
hours in a coma-like dream. In it, he
was part of some circus of multicolored skeleton people in elaborate clothes,
like on Dia de los Muertos. And he felt
trapped in there, truly believing he could never leave. This could be just like that. But she didn’t hang out with Jorge, or anyone
else who would have mescaline really, outside of work. So maybe not.

After 2 or 3 minutes of walking, Noura ushered Anne into
a much larger space, a space that seemed so enclosed yet so endless. “Welcome to Under Sky, Anne” with the same
emphasis on the ‘n’. And she emerged
into the vast dome, stepping on the dirt at least 30 feet below some sort of
bright film of air and cloud, floating there on the dirt ceiling with a quality
almost like thin television static, quietly hissing with white noise. Ethereal geese flew by silently in a V
formation. If this was a bad trip it was
certainly elaborate.

“I can show you to your living quarters if you want to
rest before the tour, but your fatal injury has been tended to and your
headache should be going away.”

Anne suddenly felt the stinging somewhere in the right
posterior of her skull. A small wound
was closed up, as was the hole on the top of her left temple. Someone had shot her. An icy cold came over her body. Is it possible to have goose bumps on your
eyeballs? Anne felt her nostrils flare
and pupils dilate, as if she were watching someone conduct experiments on
her. How much fear does it take to
induce a heart attack? What about if the
subject is already dead? Whether or not
she was tripping or injured or worse, someone or something made a hole in her
head.

Noura turned to face the stunned woman in the navy dress
and red Converse.

“Anne?” she asked in a quiet low voice, like a concerned
school nurse. “Do you want to lie down?”
…again.

“No,” Anne spurted back, in a manner almost
involuntary. “Show me.” Maybe the only way out of this hallucination
or coma or whatever it was, was to find an exit, solve a puzzle, kiss a frog.

“Okay then.” Noura
turned back around and continued onward.
She led Anne through a scatter of houses.

There were close to a hundred ranging in size, some
plain, some adorned with tiny random objects- a few pieces of glass, bottle
caps, soda pop tabs, hanging glow sticks and Barbie dolls and clay-dirt
sculptures in bags that once served as packaging for snacks like Dragon
Wafers. All of the houses were some sort
of adobe. Some were round, some
rectangular, some both- looking as if they had merged together like tree
trunks, despite their differences. Anne concluded
that these, and the larger of those with four walls, were for groups of two to
maybe four or so people. There were a
few small stone gardens and most homes had woven baskets outside. Some were a natural rusty-beige in color and
many were painted in different hues: faded reds, warm creams and yellows, cool
blues and lush greens. And one, one was
a muddled violet with a spectrum ranging from lavender to burgundy along its
rounded curves and edges. A large
rondavel with a wooden door in its entry way, a feature the others lacked with
their small open arches, was thus marked as a place of importance. Anne kept looking at this purple house in the
center as they continued to weave through.

Noura began, “The sky that you see here in Under Sky is
an astro-physical projection.” Anne
studied it. “It’s not of the sky as you know it, we are still
under the soil as you can tell from the walls that surround you. When you look up what you see is a series of
snapshots of time. Where we live here is
a…” don’t say strange, she thought, “unique place, and eventually you may begin
to understand it.”

Anne was still looking up, staring into the distance of
the white noise above her, where those geese had flown to and disappeared in a
wavy blur. “Anne?” Noura asked, sharper
this time. School nurse turned
principal. Anne’s eyes met
Noura’s. It was her turn to study. Anne had a lovely face, thick dark brows
above big greenish brown eyes, strong cheekbones and full lips with a square
jaw, still somehow feminine. It might
have been the dark chocolate curls that swirled around her strong features,
softening them.

“After your first shift your single will become
available.”

Anne just stared.

“Your rondavel. So
for now you stay here. This is good.”

Anne wondered, was she worried about her on her own?

“It’s my job to ensure your safety. So for now, I will ask you to stay with
me.”

Anne was doubting that a bad trip could continue so long
as to include an overnight stay. She
must have been pronounced dead mistakenly and landed in the hands of this
body-snatching cult with their weird little houses and their illusions of
geese.

“Mine is the purple one, we passed it.”

Write a Review
Did you enjoy my story? Please let me know what you think by leaving a review! Thanks,
m_m

James Lawson:
I enjoyed this so much I immediately bought (and read) the sequel from Amazon.ca - and am eagerly awaiting the third installment.Since this is a review and not a synopsis, I'll share my impressions rather than write out a condensed version of the plot.There were enough plot twists and turns to ke...

Keith:
UNSCRIPTED is an excellent, well-told story of a woman who tries to find herself after the painful break-up of her marriage. She does so,intriguingly, by going to Cambodia to help supervise the first free election after the brutal reign of Pol Pot and The Killing Fields. I was drawn to this story...

uccowade:
im not quite done....200 pages left. very well written. my only criticism would be the minor spelling, grammar and structure errors. needs more polishing....regardless I was able determine how word or sentences were likely intended to be written. errors we're relatively minor in frequency and...

Nida Bhounr:
the novel was a very typical and clichéd plot boy meets girls , impregnates her and leaves her because of prior commitments then they meet up again. but nonetheless it was very nicely written. it was very typical but i liked it.

Pablo Rojas:
Love the story, at the end it is a western story, simple, yet giving hints and pieces of the situation that is happening all over ravencroft´s universe. easy to read and always keeping with the main stream story I want to keep reading about, Olafson´s adventures.

ArgyrisMetaxas:
Thrilling story which builds layer ontop of layer. A few mis spellings every few chapters.What I found special was that it took a modern day problem and took it to its logical conclusion and plays this realism with gritting precision. I'm always on edge ready to shout from adrenaline. This is gre...

Jordano Quaglia:
I was taken to the future, to the shock of worlds among the people in the underground versus the mutants. The characters are well defined and rich in details, as I felt that I empathized well with them and envied their adventures while being scared by their predicament. It i a world that I would ...

Lydia Sherrer:
I first read The Speaker almost a decade ago when I first discovered author Sandra Leigh. I loved it then, and I still love it now. It is a simple, easy read, yet deep in meaning and rich in storyline. I do not know what kind of research or prior knowledge Leigh has of First Nation tribes, but sh...

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